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Reducing Delay/Latency in Zoom for Musicians Playing Together, part 1

19 Mar 2020 🔖 health zoom music
💬 EN

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I’m jumping in on Zoom tech support for work (all hands on deck!) and got to help a vocal music teacher who needs to accompany students with her piano. What she thought was “delay” in playing together turned out to be other problems.

Note: If you like this post, please drop a tip into the jar for Robert Bell, my favorite performing musician and the artist who, over the course of many fun conversations through the years, has taught me much of what I know about music and sound. Recordings also available for purchase.


Delay might not be the issue. Really.

Check, check, 1 2 3.

Once we got everything else worked out, I had the teacher and Robert (a much better rhythmist than I!) meet on Zoom. The teacher put a metronome near her microphone, and Robert clapped along into his microphone.

Although she could hear a slight delay between her metronome and his claps, she said it was nothing that couldn’t be played through for her purposes.

So let’s talk about how we got there.


Headphones, not speakers, for listening

To play simultaneously online, both of you have to wear headphones.

Strictly avoid giving your microphones any “feedback” from the sounds you’re hearing.

Any old $2 pair of headphones will make a difference.


Microphone, not telephone

Even if it’s just a cheap microphone built into your computer, neither of you should “call in” to a “phone number” over a traditional telephone to Zoom when doing music.

The all-important “original sound” feature only works when sending sound from your computer.


Computer, not phone/tablet

Sadly, Zoom’s crucial “original sound” feature, which we’ll talk about shortly, only works on full-computer versions of Zoom.

It doesn’t work on “mobile” (iPhone/iPad/Android) versions.

Both artists need to make sure that microphones attached to (or built into) your computers are responsible for transmitting your sound.

If your computer doesn’t have a camera, you might be able to let your smartphone or tablet act as a camera.

If using a phone for video, be careful not to “join” the audio at all from the phone or you’ll have feedback issues.

(That said, I hear 2-member Zoom calls can often transmit audio/video better than 3+-person ones due to something called “peer-to-peer” connections. But give it a try!)


Remember you’re on camera

Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do

Before letting me go, the teacher wanted me to sing rising scales to her piano accompaniment.

We discovered that there wasn’t so much “delay in sound” as “delay in me figuring out what she was trying to do.”

Human fields of vision are huge, and normally I’d pick up on subtle sounds of her breath, subtle motions in her arms, etc. to decide when she was “starting” to play her first note.

Ensemble playing is totally different without your senses having a full range of inputs!

Luckily, she’s an experienced teacher and asked, “What if I tilt my head back and raise my shoulders reeeeeeally big to show that I’m going to be starting my first note after every pause, and bob my head along while I play to indicate tempo?”

We nailed it.

Well, as best we could – it’s been a while since I had to stay in time with anybody like that, even in the same room.

The less “skilled” your fellow player is at adjusting to difficulty “playing along” in ensembles, the more you’ll want to over-exaggerate motions that are “in sight” for the camera.

Like all teachers adjusting to online instruction are suddenly discovering, “behavioral” changes and workarounds will be key to succeeding at the transition from real-world interactions to online ones.


Know Zoom basics

You wouldn’t want to perform a live gig without knowing how to play scales and chords, right?

Don’t let your first lesson be your first time in Zoom! Learn the ropes so that technology won’t be “in the way” when you’re teaching.

Get a free Zoom account and play with it. Make friends and family your guinea pigs by using it as a substitute for Skype / Facetime.

Here’s a list of things I’d want to be comfortable with doing from my computer before trying to use Zoom for music:

  • Logging into my Zoom account’s “web control panel” at https://zoom.us/profile through my web browser (Firefox, Chrome, etc.) and exploring how it looks.
  • Logging into my Zoom account’s “desktop control panel” on my computer and exploring how it looks.
  • “Starting” (hosting) a meeting immediately, then copying/pasting/emailing people the “link” (URL with a “j” in it, e.g. “https://zoom.us/j/123456789“) at which they can join you, and successfully carrying on a conversation.
  • “Scheduling” (hosting) a meeting for later, then copying/pasting/emailing people the “link” (URL with a “j” in it, e.g. “https://zoom.us/j/123456789“) at which they can join you, and successfully carrying on a conversation at that later time.
    • Note: Don’t use the “j” link yourself to join (“start” your meeting from your “web control panel” under “meetings,” which is an option in the menu at left, instead).
    • Otherwise, you might not end up as “host.”
  • Finding the “participants” panel while participating in a Zoom meeting from your computer and using it to confirm that you are the “host” of a meeting you expect to be “host” of.
  • Joining a meeting that someone else is hosting by visiting a link (with a “j” in it, e.g. “https://zoom.us/j/987654321“) that they sent you over e-mail, text, carrier pigeon, etc. and successfully carrying on a conversation.
  • “Quality Control” tasks, during a meeting:
    • Play with using headphones
    • If you happen to own a fancy microphone that you’d like to use, play with making sure Zoom is using it as a source of sound instead of using your computers/smartphone’s built-in microphone
    • Play with setting your camera up somewhere that enough of your face and/or body can be seen that people can see what you’re doing while freeing up both of your hands
    • Learn what’s difficult about working through a camera and come up with “workarounds.” Try to play a game with an 8-year-old and think about what habits you each have to adjust.

The fancy stuff - “Original Sound”

Okay, so you can comfortably Zoom with an 8-year-old, right?

Now we have to talk about “live sound.”

  • By default, Zoom thinks that long, sustained notes are “background noise” and tries to avoid sending them over the internet.
  • By default, Zoom thinks that brief, repetitive clicks are “background noise” and tries to avoid sending them over the internet.

Obviously, that’s not good for music-making!

Luckily, there’s an audio setting that Zoom calls “original sound.”

Enabling it for yourself and for your students can be a bit “buggy,” but here’s how I’ve gotten it to work reliably.

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What if I can’t do all this?

If you can’t do these things, I don’t recommend trying to use Zoom for simultaneous ensemble play.

But


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